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Opinion Contributor

Defining border security

Border Patrol is now more than five times larger than it was two decades ago, the author writes. | AP Photo

By ERIC OLSON and CHRISTOPHER WILSON | 2/10/13 8:48 PM EST

The recent announcements by President Barack Obama and a bipartisan group of senators outlining broad principles for immigration reform are very welcome. While the specifics of any reform will be hotly debated, a major advance has been made with the emergence of a broad political consensus, from left to right, that the current system is broken and in need of major repair.

It would be troubling, then, if this golden opportunity to fix a broken system falls victim to the very same trap that has ensnared other reform efforts. By conditioning reforms on achieving a poorly defined and much misunderstood notion of “securing the border,” the whole effort is at risk of unraveling.

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It has never been clear what precisely is meant by the term, but billions have nevertheless been spent on fences and sophisticated technology, and the Border Patrol is now more than five times larger than it was two decades ago. Has the border been secured? Hard to say since there is no agreement on the metrics for measuring border security.

In the post-Sept. 11 era, border security has largely been thought of in terms of terrorist threats, “spill over” violence from drug-trafficking organizations operating in Mexico, and the risks associated with undocumented migrants. The top priority for border law enforcement has been denying entry into the United States to would-be terrorists. To this end, enforcement has been quite effective: There are no reported cases of a terrorist attack in the U.S. that involved passage over our southern border.

While drug-trafficking related violence in Mexico has increased dramatically in recent years, violence has largely stayed in Mexico. Illegal drugs continue to flow in significant amounts, but crime data suggest that it has not contributed to a significant increase in crime or violence in the U.S. There are exceptions to this, such as the 2009 kidnapping of a suspected drug trafficker in West Texas, but these are exceptional cases, not a trend, and communities near the border have, on average, rates of murder and violent crime that are lower than the rest of the nation. San Diego and El Paso, the two largest cities on the border, are among the safest in the country.

Protecting the U.S. from the unauthorized entry of migrants often becomes the default criterion for establishing border security. Counting illegal crossings is inherently difficult, but we do know that unauthorized crossings are at their lowest point in 40 years, and the Pew Hispanic Center believes there are now as many Mexicans leaving the U.S. as entering. Studies have also dispelled the myth that immigration and crime are linked; in fact, the presence of a large immigrant population appears to actually help make a city safer.